NPD: Tablets to Outsell Laptops in Q4, Beyond

Black Friday sales, emergence of $199 slates from Google and Amazon will help shipments of slates far surpass laptops in the holiday quarter, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

Buoyed by Black Friday sales, more tablets than laptops are projected to ship in the North American market for the first time ever in the fourth quarter - and it won't even be close, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

NPD reckoned that 21.5 million tablets will ship in North America during the holiday quarter as compared with a forecast of just 14.6 million unit shipments for laptops and mini-notes. The trend will continue and accelerate in 2013, according to the research firm, which is forecasting the shipment of 80 million tablets in North America for the year versus 63.8 million laptops.

The research firm said North America was leading the charge on the shift in market balance between tablets and laptops for a number of reasons. The United States has one of the "highest PC penetration rates in the world" with more than 70 percent of households already owning one, "making new PC purchases less necessary for consumers."

NPD also cited a demonstrable shifting of consumer preference towards tablets in the U.S. as another factor in the trend, plus the fact that major tablet players like Google and Amazon "started, focused, or emphasized their tablet efforts in the U.S."

If the researcher's final forecast for full-year unit shipments of tablets and laptops in the U.S. is on the mark, 2012 would become the first year in which tablets outsold laptops in the country.

Tablet shipments in the U.S. have grown 46 percent year-over-year, with 56 million units projected to be shipped this year, up from 38.2 million in 2011, NPD said. Laptop shipments, meanwhile, have been roughly flat over the past two years, with 54.9 million units shipped last year compared with the researcher's forecast for 55.9 million unit shipments in 2012.

But NPD didn't expect tablets to outsell laptops in the worldwide market for a few more years. That won't happen until 2015, when the researcher is projecting global annual shipments of 275.9 million tablets and 270 million notebook PCs.

Lower prices, holiday shopping trends and especially this week's spate of Black Friday sales will be the "catalyst" for slates surpassing laptops in the North American market, NPD said, citing the $199 sticker price for 7-inch tablets like Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire as setting a new price point "target to match or beat" for device makers.

"Another significant influence will be the increasing number of tablet options available to consumers this holiday season. Up to this point, the tablet market was predominantly made up of Apple's 9.7-inch iPad, which had about 65 percent market share in 2011. However, this holiday season there are 7-inch, 7.9-inch, 8.9-inch, 10.1-inch, and 10.6-inch options among others," NPD wrote in a blog post announcing its findings.

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Japan Times, among other newspapers and periodicals.
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